


Ghost Stories

by ClockworkCourier



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Backstory, Blind Character, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Analysis, Character Death, Coming of Age, Cybernetics, Demisexuality, Disabled Character, Family Bonding, Frottage, Headcanon, M/M, Medical Torture, Military Background, Military Training, Oral Sex, Original Character(s), Pansexual Character, Psychological Torture, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 22:55:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7333990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack Morrison's life is, perhaps ironically, defined by ghost stories. They are what build him into the man he becomes, and in time, they are what deconstructs him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghost Stories

**Author's Note:**

> Oh lordy, where to start with this thing. Long story short, I essentially said something along the lines of, "I want to write a oneshot about Jack growing up in Indiana!", and I did! And then I kept writing! And then I didn't stop writing! And eventually I got about 10,500 words in when I decided that maybe it wasn't going to be a oneshot after all, because at this rate, it's going to be a novel. To which I then said, "I'm very cool with this!" and proceeded to down three shots of espresso and hammer this out in four days.
> 
> A lot of this was inspired by any number of things. First, I've got a soft spot for Jack because, 1. I'm a Midwesterner with plenty o' family in Indiana (s/o to the city of Elkhart!) as well as a farming background and 2. I come from a HUGE army family. Like, in the course of writing this, I babysat for a cousin who proceeded to dump ye olde army literature on me when I said there were some things I didn't understand and then kept me for an extra hour to tell me army stories. 
> 
> I also feel like I should mention that a TON of this is completely headcanon. I've assembled as much as I can that is known and 100% canon about Jack Morrison, and filled in the blanks with what I could to give him a more fleshed out backstory. Granted, Blizzard's probably going to put out plenty of content in the future, and if his backstory is better touched on in that time, then I hearby claim that this is either a time capsule from an era before that information, or it's canon divergent. But yeah, expect to see plenty of originals, mostly just to further the plot along. I apologize ahead of time for clashing with anyone else's headcanon, but this is mine and I own up to that. I'm more than happy to discuss it with anyone else as well. <333
> 
> Second-to-finally, some disclaimers! Obviously, I don't own anything but the original stuff in this bad boy. I'm fairly well acquainted with some basic information about life in the military, but a lot of this was personal research and there are bound to be mistakes, inconsistencies, and errors all throughout. I'm probably going to tweak these in time anyway, but I've tried to be as accurate as I could be for a civilian who writes stories about video game characters as a hobby. 
> 
> And _finally_ , thank you ahead of time for reading this monster. I really appreciate it, since it's already been a labor of much love. <3

_There then to Thee Thine own I leave,_  
_Mold as Thou wilt my passive clay;_  
_But let me all Thy stamp receive,_  
_But let me all Thy words obey._  
_Serve with a single heart and eye,_  
_And to Thy glory live or die._

 _  
_ -'Consecration', William S. Turner, 1866

* * *

  
Jack Morrison had been seven years old the first time he had ever heard a ghost story. Growing up in the heart of Indiana farmland definitely added to the effects of it, as the nearest house to the Morrison farm was two miles down the road, and the farm itself backed up to a copse of woods that had been left to grow wild. And at night, without a nearby city to drown it out, the sky was a fireworks display of stars, and the moon seemed to shine a little brighter there than anywhere else. All of those things combined were just enough to stir a seven year old’s imagination.  
  
It was in the deepest part of summer, when the cicadas would rattle from morning to dusk and fireflies would hover over the wheat and corn fields like a constellation brought to earth. Once in awhile, the Morrisons would have a bonfire out near the barn and their brood would assemble like a flock of chicks following a hen. The neighbors would always be invited, and that alone would make Jack happy since he could be around kids his own age that weren’t his brothers and sisters.  
  
That night, the circle around the fire was full of people. Jack’s mother and father pressed close together in their mismatched lawn chairs, sharing a tartan blanket, his paternal grandparents sitting on his mother’s left, the Hartleys and the Schneiders mixed in with the Morrisons, kids in various states of playing, eating corn on the cob or watermelon, chasing or playing fetch with the multitude of dogs that hung around the farm, or sitting quietly by the fire.  
  
Jack had opted to be near his grandfather, his namesake. The elder Jack Morrison, or Big Jack, was a relic to the seven year old one, since being seventy-five years old must have made him _ancient_. But he was always full of stories, and the younger Jack could easily listen to him for hours. He had stories about adventures he had, the war he had been in, the places he had travelled to, and countless others that could make any rainy afternoon speed up by leagues. That night, the younger Jack just _knew_ that there was a story coming, judging by the grin on his grandfather’s face. Dutifully, he stayed closeby his grandfather’s feet so he would have the best seat when the time came.  
  
After the sun set, leaving only a faint stripe of purple at the horizon and a wide-open canvas of stars above them, the kids finally settled down and edged back towards the fire. Materials for s’mores were passed around while Mr. Hartley talked about how one of his barn cats had given birth to the biggest litter of kittens he had ever seen (and Jack’s older sister cooed and immediately begged to have one). Jack’s father roasted his marshmallow for him, and his mother dutifully constructed the best s’more _ever_ for him (she was the best at it, no contest), he settled in close by Big Jack, all but sitting on his grandfather’s work boots.  
  
There was an anticipatory hush, and even Jack’s dad had an almost photocopy-perfect reproduction of his father’s smile on his face, like he knew what to expect.  
  
Big Jack cleared his throat, and Jack sat up straight, his s’more firmly sandwiched between his hands. “Well, I got a story for ya,” Big Jack started. “Any of you know how long this farm has belonged to the Morrison family?”  
  
Matt, Jack’s second oldest brother, answered first. “Dad said it’s been in our family for like, two hundred years or something.”  
  
“Oh, no, longer than that,” Big Jack corrected. “The Morrison farm has been around since before the American Civil War.” His grandfather leaned over a little, peering at Jack with a grin. “You know what that is, Little Jack?”  
  
Jack gazed up at his grandfather, hastily reaching up and wiping away the marshmallow clinging to the corner of his own mouth before shaking his head.  
  
“I’ll tell ya what it was real quick. It was a war that cut this country clear in half, and everything was North and South. Brother against brother, friend against friend. It was a real dark time, even out here. An’ at the time, the Morrisons had two sons who ran the farm. One of ‘em was the first Jack Morrison, and the other was his brother Isaiah.” Big Jack leaned back in his chair, which gave a low creak of protest. He crossed his arms over his chest and cast a glance around the bonfire. Every eye was on him. “Now, the first Jack Morrison was a good man. Real upstanding member of the community. People said he’d always help out anyone in need, even if he didn’t have nothin’ to give. And there were some lean years back then, especially after the War started. Real tempting to just sell the farm and move to the city where the jobs were, but Jack knew that the farm was his, and that was important to him. So he kept on.  
  
“Isaiah, on the other hand, didn’t want any part of the farm. He wanted to make his fortune in the banks or somethin’, so he packed up his things and moved to Louisville across the river. Jack wasn’t real happy with the decision, but he let him go, and they kept up in letters for a time before Isaiah wasn’t sayin’ a whole lot. He’d just write him a line or two, sayin’ he was healthy and all, but not much else than that.  
  
“Now, one thing you gotta know is that the Morrisons have been in just about every war in American history, all the way back to the Revolution that really got this place goin’. It’s in our blood to take arms, and it was in the first Jack Morrison’s blood, too. Once the War started then, it didn’t take him long to sign up for it. He wrote all these letters back to his wife, tellin’ her about the battles he had been in and things he had seen. He even wrote to his brother, but he never got so much as a note from Isaiah. Worried Jack a-plenty, ‘specially since Louisville was a big ol’ Union stronghold back then and there was plenty goin’ on that Isaiah could’ve gotten involved in.  
  
“Well, ol’ Jack Morrison fought all the same. He saw Gettysburg with his own eyes--that’s a real big battle, Little Jack, an’ you gotta ask your dad about it later--and he fought at Antietam. He saw plenty, and it wasn’t until the War was just about over, Jack took a musket ball to his right knee. About shattered it to pieces.”  
  
Jack gasped at this, as did his youngest sister who had since climbed into their mother’s lap. Big Jack just smiled and reached across to ruffle her hair. “Aw, he was alright, Kate. He made it all the way back home just fine, ‘cept he had a limp and had to walk with a cane the rest of his life. Now,” Big Jack turned back to the circle of people. “Where was Isaiah in all of this? Turned out he had been hidin’ from anyone who wanted him to join the cause. He didn’t want any part of the fightin’, but the real problem was that all of his plans fell through with the War. People just didn’t have the money for any of his ideas. So Isaiah went along, chasin’ the money wherever he could find it. It ended up takin’ him to a farmer in southern Kentucky named Old Tom Dawes. He was a real old, strange man, but he took Isaiah in if he’d help him ‘round the farm. Turns out Isaiah preferred farm work to fightin’, so he did just that. But all the while, he wondered about Old Tom, and a few years in, he figured Old Tom had to have been hidin’ somethin, like some kind of fortune. A _treasure._  
  
“So Isaiah Morrison started thinkin’ and plottin’, because the way things were, he couldn’t go home even if he wanted to. He didn’t have much money, and with the War goin’ on, it just wasn’t real safe. If Old Tom had this big treasure and Isaiah got his hands on it, he could take it and go anywhere in the world. And the longer he thought about it, the bigger the treasure seemed to him. By the time his plans were ready, he imagined that Old Tom was sittin’ on some stolen fortune from a Spanish galleon, _millions_ of dollars worth of gold coins and treasures from royalty or from the Crusades. And all those years of wantin’ that treasure he ain’t even seen, Isaiah wasn’t all thinkin’ right. First, he tried findin’ out about it from Old Tom himself, and then Old Tom’s daughter. He didn’t hear so much as a word. Then he tried to find it himself, but he couldn’t find even a coin. Well, then somethin’ real bad happened. One night, Isaiah came into Old Tom’s room with a pistol and threatened the old man to tell him where he hid his treasure. No one knows what Old Tom said, but Isaiah killed him right then and there, shot him _six_ times right in that bed.”  
  
Jack and his sister gasped again, and even Matt looked a little pale. Big Jack just grinned and went on.  
  
“Not many people knew what happened after, ‘cept that Isaiah and Old Tom’s daughter disappeared from the farm. Farmhand found the poor man, and said that he believed Isaiah did it, seein’ as how he was actin’ funny beforehand. The only thing they knew was that the two were missin’, along with four hundred dollars in cash from Old Tom’s bureau. Not exactly a _treasure_. Except,” he paused, holding up one finger. “Some stories say he did find the treasure, and seein’ as how he was gonna be a wanted man, he ran away with it. No matter what he did, if he found it or not, he ended up back where he started. Right here, on this very farm.”  
  
“What happened next, Papa?” Kate asked, half-burying herself under their parent’s tartan blanket so only her eyes showed above its hem.  
  
“Oh, there’s lots of stories on that, but the one that _I_ know, as a Morrison, was that Isaiah Morrison died on this farm. Now, it depends on who you ask. Some paper might say that he lived out the rest of his days between here and Laconia, but if you ask a Morrison, then you know that his own brother killed him.”  
  
That thought sent a very distinct chill through Jack. He heard Matt’s breath hitch, and a few kids from the Schneider family murmured anxiously amongst themselves. Even Randy Hartley, the bravest of their entire neighborhood group, shifted uncomfortably on his deck chair.  
  
Big Jack was completely in his element, smiling almost serenely as he continued. “Now, the story my dad told me is the one I live by, since it’s the same story his mama told him. The way they told it is that Isaiah came back to the farm when the War was over. Didn’t write to his brother or nothin’ to tell him he was coming back. He just showed up out of the clear blue one day with Old Tom’s daughter in tow. Now, ol’ Jack Morrison was a good man, like I said, and he would never turn his own brother out. But you had best believe he knew something was wrong. Isaiah was actin’ real strange, see, and Jack couldn’t understand why he would want to come back after he had just gone on and on about how much he hated bein’ on a farm. But brothers were brothers, and there had been a whole War that forced brothers to fight, so Jack let him stay.  
  
“And it went on like that for awhile. Isaiah and his new wife stayed on the farm and worked. They lived on one floor of that very house--” He pointed to the farmhouse, and Jack had a hard time not imagining that his grandfather pointed to his bedroom window. “--and Jack and his wife lived on another. But things weren’t all rosy, of course. Ol’ Jack still knew somethin’ was strange, but every time he tried to bring it up, Isaiah would brush him off. He’d say that he made a bit of a fortune for himself in Kentucky, and that Jack had no business prying. So Jack stayed out of it, at least until he couldn’t anymore.  
  
“So it was a fateful Sunday afternoon when everything happened. A friend of Jack’s came by for dinner, but he was actin’ nervous. When ol’ Jack asked him what was the matter, his friend pulled him aside and handed him a clippin’ from a newspaper. It was a whole big thing about a man named Isaiah Morrison killin’ a gentleman named Tom Dawes, and escapin’ with money and Old Tom’s daughter. Well, Jack couldn’t ignore it, and he certainly couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t his own brother that did the crime. Everything just lined up too well. So Jack, bein’ an honest and good man, confronted his brother after dinner in the parlor. Jack showed him the paper, and he told his brother to be honest with him. ‘You gotta turn yourself in!’ he said. But Isaiah just kept sayin’ that no, it wasn’t the same man. He didn’t know a Tom Dawes. Jack wasn’t havin’ it, knowin’ that his brother was lying to his face. And he told him as much, sayin’ that if he didn’t do something about it, Jack would just turn him and his wife out, as he wasn’t gonna harbor a criminal.  
  
“That did it, though. Isaiah got this real mad look in his eyes, and he shouted at his brother that he was a traitor since he didn’t believe him. Then he pulled out the very same gun he had killed Old Tom with and aimed it at Jack.  
  
“Thing was, all those years in the War had made Jack pretty quick. And all those nights of bein’ afraid for his life made him a pretty quick draw, on top of sleepin’ with a pistol under his pillow. He never went so much as to the outhouse without it in his jacket. He told Isaiah not to do it, to just drop the gun and leave while he still could. Of course Jack didn’t want to hurt his brother, but he wasn’t gonna let him hurt anyone else either. But Isaiah was too far gone, and he made it pretty clear. So Jack did what he had to do. First he shot Isaiah in the hand to try to get him to drop the gun, but Isaiah was frothin’ mad by that point. He didn’t let go of his pistol, even with half his hand gone. All Isaiah said was, ‘It’s not my fault!’ over and over. And when he finally shot at Jack, he missed an’ hit the ceilin’. There’s still a hole in the rafters if you were to look past the plaster.”  
  
Jack peered at his grandfather from over the edge of his chair while he fidgeted with his hands between is knees. “But he killed him?”  
  
Big Jack nodded, a sagely, solemn expression on his face. “Yeah, Little Jack. Ol’ Jack Morrison put just one bullet in his brother’s head, right between the eyes. Dropped him like a big ol’ sack of corn, before Isaiah could hurt anyone else. An’ Isaiah’s wife came runnin’ in after she heard the commotion. The second she saw Isaiah on the ground, she knew what happened, and the confession came pourin’ out. She told Jack how Isaiah had killed Old Tom and stole the money, and that they had been on the run for years, with Isaiah just gettin’ worse and worse, thinkin’ there were men outside of every house they lived in.  
  
“It was enough for Jack, who was awful sad about what he had to do. They took Old Tom’s daughter away, to who knows where, and they buried Isaiah out in the woods to the back of the farm.”  
  
Jack gaped at this information, immediately (along with just about everyone else) turning his head to look at the black outline of the woods across the field. “Over there?”  
  
“Yep,” Big Jack said, nodding again. “Put him in a hole right in the ground with only a sign above his grave sayin’ ‘I.J.M.’ for Isaiah Joseph Morrison.”  
  
“Is it still there?” The question came in the half-whispered voice of Matt, who had unconsciously drifted a little closer to his parents.  
  
Big Jack shrugged, crossing one leg over the other. “Probably not, seein’ as how it would have been from the 1860s. But sure as anything, his bones are out there.” He paused again before a sly smile crossed his face. “That wasn’t the end of Isaiah Morrison, though. See, sometimes when people get killed like that, they don’t just stay dead. You die angry, and you just keep goin’ on, as a _ghost._ ”  
  
The world alone made Kate yelp and cling to her mother, who just rolled her eyes and stroked his sister’s hair. Jack, dutifully, didn’t make a sound. He simply frowned and swallowed hard, trying to ignore the fear coiling cold in the depth of his chest and racing up his spine.  
  
“Well, Isaiah Morrison died knowin’ his brother was the man to kill him, and he died yellin’ how Old Tom’s death wasn’t his fault. Only natural that Isaiah would come back from the dead, angry as anything. It wasn’t for some years after he died that he started makin’ his feelings known. On real bad nights, when the storms would kick up, ol’ Jack Morrison and anyone else in the house would hear gunshots. And when they’d go to see what happened, they’d find the house empty. Then, they would hear yelling at night, and it sounded like Isaiah, screamin’ all the way from his grave.  
  
“It drove Jack half-mad after awhile, and he started lookin’ for ways to try to keep the spirit at peace. He even got the priest from the church to come down and bless the grave, but it didn’t do any good. On every stormy night, they’d all hear Isaiah shootin’ and screamin’. Sometimes, Jack would wake up to see his own brother standing over his bed, holding a pistol up like he was gonna exact his revenge. But then he’d just disappear before Jack could so much as say a word. It looked like nothin’ was ever gonna keep Isaiah at ease. And nothin’ did, until the day when ol’ Jack Morrison finally passed away.  
  
“As he was layin’ on his bed, his children and grandchildren all around him, Jack told them the story of what had happened on that fateful afternoon. He said he didn’t have many regrets in life. He had killed men during the War, and even though he felt awful about them, nothin’ got him quite like Isaiah did. And he said as much, sayin’ that if they heard those gunshots or those screams, it was Jack’s fault. So, with his final breath, Jack Morrison said, ‘Let him rest, knowin’ I’ll be there soon.’ Then he put his head back on his pillow, and he was gone.  
  
“Well, sure as anything, the shootin’ and the screamin’ stopped almost that exact day. The next time it stormed, all anyone could hear was the rain and the thunder. It seemed like with Jack’s death, Isaiah was at rest, just like his brother wanted. But even after that, from time to time, on real bad stormy nights, sometimes you can hear it real faint. Gunshots, yellin’, and whatnot. Like maybe somewhere out there, Isaiah’s still mad about what happened.”  
  
Big Jack finished the story, and the ring around the fire was completely silent. The only sounds were the gentle song of the crickets in the grass, the crackling of the fire, and the faraway barking of a dog. Then, Matt spoke next, his voice in a kind of hushed reverence. “Is that all true?”  
  
“Maybe. No one’s _really_ sure, but like I said, it was the story that my dad’s mama taught to him, so that’s the one I hold to.”  
  
“ _Mama,_ ” Kate whined, rolling under the blanket so she could cling to her mother.  
  
Again, their mother rolled her eyes. “It’s fine, Katie. It’s just a story. Grandpa’s just trying to scare you.”  
  
Jack didn’t want to admit that the story effectively spooked him. While everyone else started to settle back into some kind of conversation (including Randy Hartley insisting that the story didn’t scare him at all and he had heard scarier), Jack sat in contemplative silence, once in awhile glancing up at the woods on the edge of the property. He had climbed around back there before, and he knew just as anyone else did that there was no way to tell if there was a grave out there or not. Everything was so overgrown and tangled anyway. Still, that also meant that there very well _could_ have been a grave.  
  
And all of this had happened in the same house Jack lived in now. He wondered if the ghost appeared in the room that was now his parents’, or if it could have shown up in the smaller bedroom that Jack shared with Matt. No matter where a ghost could have shown up, Jack felt like he was going to have a hard time sleeping that night.  
  
Caught in his contemplation, he didn’t see Big Jack scooting closer on the edge of the chair until his grandfather spoke. “You’re thinkin’ hard, Little Jack,” he quipped, his voice warm and crackling like the fire.  
  
“Oh, uh.” Jack turned and looked at his grandfather, at the deep lines on his face and his eyes bright like the clearest Indiana sky. Big Jack almost always smiled at him, and his smile was just the barest upward curve under a bristly mustache that was the same bleached-white of his hair. He was smiling now, and it made Jack feel a little bit at ease, enough to admit it quietly to his grandfather out of earshot of anyone else. “That was... kinda creepy, grandpa.”  
  
“Ah, but you’re a smart boy,” Big Jack returned, reaching over and ruffling Jack’s hair. “You don’t believe in all that, do ya?”  
  
Did he? Hard to say, seeing as how Jack had to summon the composure not to shake hard enough to knock his knees together. “No,” he finally said, definitely dishonestly. Still, he played at bravado, puffing himself up like one of their roosters with his head held high. “Ghosts aren’t real, right?”  
  
“That’s what people like to say.”  
  
Jack’s shoulders sank a little at the response. He was expecting like another nod full of sagely wisdom, with his grandfather reassuring him that there was no way someone could just come back from the dead like that. “What do you mean?” he managed, his voice strained.  
  
“Well, I can’t say nothin’ for certain, Little Jack. The world’s a big and odd place. You’ll learn all that soon enough, like everyone else.”  
  
“So, there _could_ be ghosts?”  
  
Big Jack grinned at his grandson and shrugged again. “There could be anything. You know what I say, though?” He reached over and gestured at Jack’s eyes with two of his fingers. “Trust what these see, Little Jack. They might play with you sometimes, and sometimes they don’t work quite like they should, ‘specially when you get old, but your eyes are real bad liars. Not a bad idea to trust them.”  
  
Realization dawned, and it made Jack feel a little better. “If I don’t _see_ a ghost...”  
  
“Then they might not exist,” Big Jack finished for him with another nod. “That’s a good way to do it.”  
  
It made Jack feel a little better, but once the Hartleys and the Schneiders went home and the fire was extinguished, Jack still stayed close by his parents as they all went inside. He reluctantly followed Matt up the stairs to their room, and all he had to do was glance once at the living room before he shivered and took the stairs two at a time.  
  
He and his brother got ready for bed in absolute silence, permeated only by Kate and their oldest sister singing in the bathroom and their mom laughing. Matt got settled quickly enough, but Jack laid there for a long while after the lights were turned off, his eyes darting around the room to catch any shape or shadow that wasn’t supposed to be there. Suddenly, in the dark, everything was strange and unfamiliar. A draft catching a curtain, the shape of his brothers clothes hanging up on the closet door, the unending creaking and settling of an old house. Jack gritted his teeth and pulled his blankets up nearly to his chin, trying to will the fear to settle.  
  
“Matt?” he finally whispered, and he heard his brother roll over on the other side of the room.  
  
“Yeah?” There was a little relief in the fact that Matt sounded as awake as Jack was.  
  
Jack frowned and took a deep breath. “Grandpa’s story wasn’t true, right? There’s no ghosts in our house.”  
  
Silence. Jack heard the air conditioner rattle a few times before Matt managed to reply. “I dunno.”  
  
“But, like, if there was a ghost, we would have seen it already, right?”  
  
“I guess, but...”  
  
“But _what?_ ”  
  
“Maddie said she saw stuff in here before.” Maddie was their oldest sister, almost fourteen now. She was the most level-headed of the Morrison brood, already on the principal’s list at school, the National Honor Society, and the high school’s trivia team. Jack trusted her word as much as he trusted his parents’. To hear that she might have seen a ghost just about sent Jack’s nerves through the ceiling.  
  
Jack’s voice was painfully strained when he spoke again. “What did she see?”  
  
“You’d have to ask her, but I know she said she thought she saw a guy standing in her door once.”  
  
“At night?”  
  
“Mhmm.”  
  
“A _ghost?_ ”  
  
Matt grumbled something before Jack heard him roll in his bed again. “I dunno, Jack. She just said she saw stuff. Ask her tomorrow.”  
  
That’s not what concerned Jack at the moment. What concerned him was that the tortured ghost of Isaiah Morrison was _totally_ going to appear in his room in a flurry of gunshots and screaming, and the walls would probably start bleeding and he was absolutely going to attack Jack because he and Isaiah’s brother shared a name and it was going to be the _worst._  
  
“What about the woods? Did anyone see anything in there before?”  
  
Matt sounded like he was ready to fling a pillow across the room. “Just go to bed, Jack.”  
  
But Jack barely slept a minute that night, and when he did, he dreamt of bulletholes in the ceiling of their living room, and the woods behind their farm having as many headstones as a cemetery, and the bloody ghost of an old, crazed man, screaming and wailing about how it wasn’t his fault.  
  
\---  
  
Fall came to southern Indiana as a riot of burnished coppers and golds, painting the countryside in every hue it had in its arsenal. And there was definitely something to be said about those early morning moments when the Morrison kids waited for the bus, the air carrying that distinct chilled promise of winter, the sky brilliant blue and streaked with clouds as mists rose over the wheat fields, and the trees filled with trembling leaves in every shade of red, orange, and yellow.  
  
It was an important time for any farmer, what with the harvest and storage and selling and everything involved. While that was all fine and good, the Morrison kids were far more concerned with how fast Halloween was approaching. That brought its own level of activity, since the Kresge farm on Whittaker Road was having its annual haunted hayride, and the Hartleys were having their Halloween party on the 25th (which was apparently more important than last year since Matt had recently gotten a huge crush on Cameron Hartley), and to top it all off, the Jaycees were hosting a haunted house nearby that was said to be the single scariest thing in the county. Talk around school said that it wasn’t so much scary because the Jaycees had set it up, but that the building they were using was _actually_ haunted. Naturally, the entire Morrison clan wanted to go.  
  
Jack was fifteen by then, already asserting himself as a sort of a leader type. Although he was only a sophomore in high school, there was already word going around that he’d be voted in as captain of the basketball team by the next year. He was his class’s student council vice president, and a firm sponsor of Students Against Destructive Decisions. By grace of being a Morrison alone, he had practically been fated to be in 4-H from birth. There weren’t enough hours in the day, otherwise he imagined he’d be in FFA or something else on top of everything else he did.  
  
By then, he felt like he was caught in some kind of movie cliche. Being the jock, starting to really grow into his looks (he was already 5’9” and the progress didn’t seem to be stopping), being on student council, and even though he wasn’t dating her, he had taken the absolutely gorgeous Lydia Roussey to homecoming. But as to break stereotypes, Jack was the farthest thing from a jerk. His social circle included just about everyone, from misfits to the closest thing to socialites a tiny farming community in Indiana could have. Jack Morrison was known for being ridiculously friendly, and that was something he had more pride in than any possible basketball captaincy or student council position.  
  
It was enough that when Jack formed the idea of having a Halloween bonfire at the Morrison house, nearly half the student body wanted to come. Granted, for a tiny town where the population was just over six-hundred on a good day, that didn’t make for a huge crowd. Still, when he posed the question to his parents, his mother just glanced at him over the top of her glasses.  
  
“Nothing that would make the cops come here. That means alcohol, drugs, whatever. Am I clear?”  
  
“Absolutely,” Jack replied. But he also knew there was no guarantee that someone wouldn’t bring in some filched bottle of cheap whiskey. They were teenagers after all, even if Jack did have a S.A.D.D. ribbon on his backpack. He wasn’t going to drink it, and if Matt was smart, he wouldn’t either.  
  
So the plans were set in motion, with the fire being two days before the Hartley’s Halloween party. That also meant that Matt had two shots and trying to woo Cameron, which consequently made him an absolute nervous wreck in the days leading up to it. Jack didn’t have any problems like that, since he and Lydia had just stayed friends even though everyone at school seemed to have bets on them hooking up. Not like Lydia wasn’t an awesome girl, but it was just that Jack wasn’t really interested in anyone. Besides, he had seen what pining for someone had done to his brother, and he wasn’t super intent on repeating that in his own life.  
  
The days went by in an activity-filled blur. It was a lot of lather-rinse-repeat at the Morrison household, with chores, school, extra-curriculars, farmwork, and the rare downtime that lately seemed almost completely dedicated to homework. Jack was grateful when the last of the fields were done, with a close shave of three days before the bonfire. The rest of the work was taken on by his dad and some of the hired farmhands, leaving the Morrison kids to their own devices, which translated to setting up for their party.  
  
The Morrison property had two barns. Only one of them was for regular farming use, having been built about twenty years beforehand. The other one was practically an antique, as Big Jack had told them that it had been built in the 1920s after the one from the original farm burned down after a lantern had toppled over (“The same thing that happened to Chicago,” Big Jack had said mournfully, as if he remembered the event firsthand) and ignited the hay. The old barn was mostly used for storage if there was nowhere else, and the loft was where the barn cats lived. For the bonfire, it was being repurposed into something of a social center, with card tables set up and covered in cheap plastic tablecloths for snacks and drinks, and kitschy Halloween decorations strung up from the rafters and the rusty nails on the walls. It was far from the most aesthetic party Jack had ever been to, but he was completely psyched regardless.  
  
Come seven o’clock in the evening on the 23rd, the barn transformed into a hub of energy and social activity. It seemed like the half of the school that wanted to come did show up. The bare stretch of shoulder on their road was lined with dirty pick-up trucks and secondhand cars belonging to a fleet of teenagers. Jack’s parents were the semi-watchful sentinels of the entire affair, mostly watching from the kitchen windows like a pair of coffee-addled gargoyles. Jack was fine with this, and was just as pleased to see that all red Solo cups either had punch, soda, or water in them. If there was whiskey floating around like he predicted, he didn’t see it.  
  
By the time the sun was completely submerged beneath the horizon, the late October chill had settled in like a frigid pall. Appropriate, Jack figured, and all the better for lighting the bonfire, which immediately drew in a dozen shivering teenagers dressed in varying shades of essentially the same barn jacket. Even better was the fact that the moon was almost completely full, rising up in the east like an enormous disc of copper. Couple all of that with the progressively barren trees and the foreboding silhouette of moonlit woods in the distance, and everything was set up near _perfectly_ for a ghost story.  
  
The story of Isaiah Morrison had been repeated plenty of times since that summer night eight years prior. Big Jack could still tell it pretty well, but the younger Jack had practiced and sculpted the story to perfection over the years. Yes, there was some extra exaggeration (Maddie’s creative writing course in college had been a pretty big help) and a side bit about how the Jack in the story returned to the grave to find Old Tom’s daughter’s body lying over it, practically reduced to bones. All in all, Jack figured the story had only gotten better with age.  
  
That, and Matt would probably thank him if he managed to creep Cameron out enough to get them to huddle together.  
  
Once there was a sizeable crowd around the fire, Jack took his favorite spot in the most ancient of lawn chairs closest to the barn. Kate was hovering around him with one arm latched firmly around a bowl of Cheetos, her lime green galoshes not exactly conducive to Halloween atmosphere. She was in seventh grade as of September, but her current favorite thing was bothering her brothers in any way she could.  
  
“You’re gonna tell the Isaiah story again, aren’t you?” she asked, shoving another Cheeto into her mouth. There was already a ring of orange around her mouth and Jack resisted the urge to use the sleeve of his jacket to wipe it off.  
  
He just grinned at her and raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Maybe.”  
  
“You _are._ Like, everyone’s heard that one.”  
  
“Not in the woods, they haven’t.”  
  
“In the--” Kate paused, eyes widening in realization. “Seriously?”  
  
He nodded, glancing out to the area in question. After he had heard the story the first time, it took Jack a good two weeks to work up the moxie to go out to the woods at all. Granted, it had been in the daytime and Matt had been with him, so it didn’t scare him as bad. But once he finally had the courage to go out at night (which took another three weeks), he found out exactly how terrifying the woods had the capability to be. Now that he was older, it was less of a frightening thing and more of an opportunity. Taking some dozen teenagers out there with him and conjuring up the spirit of a tortured murderer seemed like a great idea.  
  
“Yeah,” he finally replied. “You coming with us?”  
  
“Ugh, _no._ That’s asking for a twisted ankle,” Kate said, scrunching up her nose. “Besides, other than you telling the story, it’s just going to be all gross teenage stuff. I’m not ready for that yet.”  
  
Jack had to laugh at that, and then reach up and ruffle her hair out of its ponytail. She grunted in irritation and swatted his hand away. “Okay,” he said. “You’re going to miss out on all the fun.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. Loads.” Kate sighed and started back toward the barn, presumably to steal a bowl of something else and increase her sodium intake by leagues.  
  
It didn’t take much longer for everyone else to assemble at the bonfire. Once Jack was satisfied with the crowd, he pulled a flashlight out of his jacket and tossed it between his hands while he talked. “You’ve all heard the story of Isaiah Morrison, right?”  
  
There was a general murmur of yes, to no one’s surprise. The Morrison kids had spread it at every bonfire, harvest event, pool party, and birthday. Generally, everyone could give the gist of it, that there were two brothers, one killed a guy in Kentucky and took his daughter as a wife and took a bunch of money, came back, and the other brother shot him and buried him in the woods behind the Morrison farm. Sometimes there was a ghost involved, and sometimes there wasn’t. Jack’s intent for that night went a little above and beyond.  
  
“Well, there’s more to it than what you’ve heard,” he went on, dropping his voice and grinning. “Everyone knew what happened, and word got around pretty quick back then. But then a rumor started about the treasure that Isaiah Morrison had hunted. The story got around that he had found it, but his paranoia got the best of him and rather than run away with the money, he came back to the farm to hide it before the authorities could get it or get him. And from what they heard, he buried it in the very woods that he would eventually get buried in himself.”  
  
Just like before, multiple heads turned toward the moonlit line of trees in the distance. Just as Jack had planned. And also like he planned, he could see Matt sidling up to Cameron’s side like he was magnetized.  
  
“So,” Jack continued. “Isaiah died, like the story goes, and he was buried with just a small marker as his headstone. But treasure hunters are treasure hunters, and it’s said that the _real_ reason that he started haunting his brother wasn’t just because he was angry over his own death, but that his remains had been disturbed. Some people seemed to think that the treasure was buried with him, or at least nearby. And one night, a lot like this one, his brother went out to the grave to see if the rumors were true. And what he found...”  
  
Jack clicked on the flashlight and shined the beam toward the woods, and multiple sets of eyes followed the motion. “It was straight up grave robbing,” Jack said, keeping his tone as ominous as possible. He even made a conscious attempt to make it sound gravelly like his grandfather’s. “He found bones scattered around the place, and strips of clothing everywhere, like an animal had attacked the site. Worse yet? When he actually looked in the grave, he found someone _else_ in there. Someone who wasn’t his brother.”  
  
And that part had been added on that morning while Jack was contemplating in the shower during his morning routine. He had also thought about adding that there were more bones than there would be for just one body, or that the grave looked like someone had broken their way out. Both seemed a little too extreme, so he toned it down.  
  
“Anyway, Isaiah’s brother was so distraught by this that he reburied the bodies as quickly as he could. And when he tried to calm the spirits down, he would go back every year at that time and try to ease them. Like we’re going to do.”  
  
There was another murmur that went through the group, except this time, it was one of surprise. Finally, Brendan Reid spoke up somewhere near the back. The guy was jumpy at the best of times, even though he tried to act confident. “We’re going out _there_? Isn’t it kinda dark?”  
  
“Hey, flashlights and the moon,” Jack said, gesturing with his flashlight. “We’ll be good. Just follow me and Matt.”  
  
And so a small horde of huddled teenagers started making their way across the recently-harvested wheat field, led by several cell phone lights and Jack’s flashlight. It wasn’t a very long way, and no matter where they stood, they could still see the lights of the Morrison house, so it wasn’t unsafe. Jack had made the trek many times since he was a kid, and he knew the biggest threats were sticks to trip on and the occasional possum or raccoon.  
  
While they walked, Jack heard someone hurry their steps and come up on his right. He turned to see Alex Randazzo, one of his classmates and treasurer for student council. He and Alex had known each other since they were toddlers, going to the same day care and being exchanged between parents on a day-to-day basis. While Alex wasn’t necessarily his best friend, they were as close as childhood friends could be.  
  
Alex was definitely growing to be fairly handsome, which was something Jack could easily recognize. Dark, wavy hair, the kind of face that reminded Jack of the guys he saw in Kate’s favorite pre-teen magazine, where they all had various states of the same pouting face, and hazel eyes that made it hard to determine what the primary color was. He was also friendly and very loyal to whomever he chose to be friends with, which was something Jack valued in him. During the first campaign for student council, even though Alex was perfectly qualified to be vice president, he ran for treasurer as to not upset Jack. Once Jack found out about it, he nearly whacked Alex to death with his backpack in retaliation for selling himself short. And then he hugged him, because he was just too damn nice.  
  
Alex loped beside him now, with lanky legs he was still growing into. He had his hands jammed in his flannel jacket, and he smiled at Jack with this lopsided grin he always had, which Jack’s mother had remarked that it looked like someone had fastened it on crooked. One corner of his mouth always was higher than the other, which made him look like he was smirking all the time. He had that smirk-grin going full tilt, and Jack knew to take it as genuine happiness rather than as sardonic as Alex had a tendency to appear.  
  
“Going to visit the famous Morrison murder grave, huh?” Alex remarked, easily keeping pace with Jack. “Let me guess. You and Matt went out this morning and did some creative fabrication.”  
  
“Aw, Alex, that really stings. I’d never fabricate anything,” Jack said, mock-hurt.  
  
“Pfff.” Alex reached over and fondly shoved Jack in the shoulder. “ _J’accuse_ and all that.”  
  
Their silence was amiable rather than awkward, and it was easy to slide back into a different conversation. He and Alex always seemed to have that kind of chemistry. “So, Hartley’s party?” Jack said.  
  
“Of course. What else is there to do around here? I mean, other than to get up to some good ol’ fashioned cow tipping. Y’know, the Indiana state sport.”  
  
“I can’t believe I associate with such a miscreant,” Jack replied, heavy on the dramatic. He snorted when Alex gasped and put his hand over his chest like he had just been mortally wounded. And then they both broke into a laugh before Alex shook his head.  
  
“Yeah, but no, like, I’ve got nothing better to do. I mean, so long as they don’t do the seven minutes in heaven thing they did last year, and the year before that, and the one before that.”  
  
“You mean you don’t like sitting in the utility closet and staring at dryer sheets for seven minutes?”  
  
“Mmm, it’s tempting,” Alex quipped, even going as far as stroking his chin. “But yeah, I’m cool with just, I dunno, sitting and petting their cat the whole time. Besides, Cameron’s gonna be preoccupied with your brother, so he’s not gonna be much fun.”  
  
Jack sent a conspiratorial glance over his shoulder, where Matt and Cameron were walking about a foot apart. Then, he looked back up at Alex. “You think they’ll hook up?”  
  
“I think you already planned all that out, matchmaker. And only if Hartley knows what’s good for him.” Alex paused, and then glanced at Jack with a thoughtful expression. “Speaking of, what happened with you and Lydia? Like, you went to homecoming and...?”  
  
“And that was it,” Jack finished with a shrug. “We’re friends?”  
  
“Friends, question mark?”  
  
Jack sighed. “No, just, literally friends. I didn’t ask her out afterwards or anything. She just needed a date and so did I.”  
  
Alex gave him a peculiar look, which was hard to make out in the dark. Then, he nodded. “That’s cool.”  
  
The silence that followed this time was a little more awkward, and Jack filled it by focusing on the sound of his own boots in the dirt. And he kept his thoughts occupied with his surroundings, like the cold bite in the air, the smoky black clouds drifting across the sky against the backdrop of the moon,  and the still darkness of the woods. He watched dim points of light drift aimlessly on the ground in front and around him as people followed him with the lights on their phones.  
  
Finally, they got to the edge of the woods, and Jack turned to face the group, with Alex on one side of him and Matt and Cameron on the other. “Alright,” Jack started, gesturing behind him with his thumb. “Watch your feet in there. You’re looking for kind of a makeshift cross that says ‘I.J.M.’ And remember to _stay in groups._ ”  
  
“Yes, sir,” Alex joked beside him.  
  
The group broke into several smaller ones, mostly in pairs or in trios. Matt went with Cameron, of course, and Alex stayed with Jack, who in turn just found a large boulder to sit on and decided to make camp there. Alex leaned against it and the two of them watched a sea of phone lights drifting around in the woods, followed by shouts and giggles from any number of people.  
  
“Not gonna go look for your long lost forsaken relative?” Alex asked.  
  
Jack shook his head and grinned, before leaning back with his arms supporting his weight and admiring the light of the moon through the trees. “Nah, but one of my less lost but equally forsaken relatives is going to find them.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Did I mention that my oldest brother is visiting from college this weekend?”  
  
A beat, and then Jack could see Alex’s crooked grin come back in full force. “You sneaky little bastard.”  
  
“Technically, _Caleb_ is the sneaky bastard. I’m just the messenger, and it was totally my dad’s idea.”  
  
“Okay. Correction. The entire Morrison family is a clan of sneaky bastards.”  
  
“It’s a gift and a curse.”  
  
They sat and continued watching the light show in the distance, with Jack’s phone buzzing against his hip once with a message from his oldest brother. ‘ _Almost ready. Just send the word!_ ’ Jack smiled down at his phone and pocketed it for the moment. As soon as he heard a yelp from someone who would find the hastily-dug pit that Jack, Matt, and Caleb had made that morning, he’d text his brother who was currently sitting in their dad’s deer blind wearing a black bathrobe and a skull mask.  
  
“So, uh,” Alex started, jerking Jack out of the reverie he was in danger of falling into. Jack turned his attention toward him with a hum. To his surprise, Alex looked a little nervous, with the crooked corner of his mouth a little higher than normal. “Like, just out of curiosity, and obviously, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. It’s your life and all that, but, um... Why didn’t you ask Lydia out?”  
  
Jack blinked and frowned. He didn’t think Alex liked Lydia. Granted, she was very pretty and extremely smart, but she didn’t strike him as Alex’s type. Then again, he didn’t really _know_ Alex’s type. “I don’t know,” he answered, not entirely honestly. He didn’t want to mention that he hadn’t really been interested in many girls as of late, even though he’d been attracted to them in the past. His brain had been a very confusing place in the past year. “I mean, she’s nice enough, but she just didn’t really... do it for me?”  
  
“What, like a kink thing?” Alex asked, but the humor sounded forced.  
  
Jack groaned and nudged Alex’s shoulder with his own. “You know what I mean. Why, were you planning on asking her out?”  
  
“No, I--” Alex cut himself off, sounding flustered. He ducked his head down. “Not like that. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her, and not like she’s not cool or anything. I was just wondering why _you_ didn’t.”  
  
That was cutting dangerously close to the truth, and it made Jack feel antsy. “Well, there you go,” he said, a little faster than he would have liked. And he was about to change the subject as royally as he could, from Lydia and homecoming to something like the Jaycees haunted house, until--  
  
Well, until Alex leaned over and kissed him.  
  
It was like Jack had grabbed an exposed wire. Every muscle in his body tensed, his eyes went wide, and his breathing stopped dead in his lungs. It wasn’t quite a second before Alex pulled away, but it felt like it lasted an hour, as Jack’s brain desperately tried to keep up and make sense out of what had just happened. Once Alex was fully back in his vision, his synapses went to work with such force that he felt like he was having some kind of vertigo, and it nearly toppled him right off the boulder.  
  
Because Alex Randazzo had kissed him. Alex, his friend since childhood, since the proverbial ‘I knew you when we were still in diapers’ stage, had kissed him without so much as a warning. Or, maybe he had warned him in his own way.  
  
Lydia wasn’t his type, Jack thought. _But I didn’t know Alex’s type. He never..._  
  
It took him a second more to realize that Alex was staring back at him in something like mounting panic. Words started to tumble out of his mouth like an avalanche; slowly, and then all in one go like he couldn’t keep them contained.  
  
“Christ, Jack, I’m so sorry. I didn’t-- Shit, I mean, if you--” He raked a hand through his hair, his skin looking ghost pale in the moonlight. “I just thought that maybe, with Lydia-- And oh god, if you just wanna pretend that didn’t happen--”  
  
Jack’s brain finally caught up with everything else, and this time, it had gotten past the logical stage and went right for the jugular of how he felt about it. _Not bad,_ was the general consensus. _Confused. A little scared. But not bad._  
  
His heart was ramming at a frightening speed, like his ribs would be sore in the morning from an attack from the inside. His breath kept catching in his throat, and every nerve seemed more alive somehow. The October chill felt colder, the wind icier, and he could feel just the barest dampness on his bottom lip. Just that one sensation alone sent some kind of thrill through him, the way he had never experienced before. It was a good feeling, if he had to label it. He had had adrenaline rushes before, but this was something almost more top tier than that. He had no idea what to call it, but it was a runner’s high without an end in sight.  
  
“ _Alex,_ ” he said, cutting through Alex’s panicked scramble for words. The boy in question stopped and stared imploringly, maybe a little hopefully. It was hard to tell in the dark.  
  
There were a few things he wanted to say, most along the lines of ‘How long?’ and ‘Hey, maybe I like you, too!’ But words just weren’t happening at that moment. He tried a few times to summon them, but finally, he just had to make some kind of move. He reached up behind Alex’s neck and pulled him back down, pressing their lips together so gently that a thrilled thought went through Jack’s head about how much like a movie moment it seemed. Once the shock wore off a little more, both of Alex’s hands were on Jack’s shoulders, one them slowly moving onto his neck and up to his jaw. Jack was caught in the more awkward position of still sitting on the boulder, leaning back with one hand on Alex’s elbow to keep himself upright. Still, positions aside, it wasn’t a half bad kiss. Not like Jack had a track record to speak of, but even in his limited experience, he knew it was good.  
  
Before they could do anything else (and Jack’s mind helpfully supplied a long list of _what ifs_ ), they were interrupted by a startled yelp, followed by a handful of shouts, mostly sounding like, “ _There it is!_ ”  
  
Jack didn’t let go of Alex, and Alex kept his hands on Jack, but they reluctantly stopped kissing and just looked at each other.  
  
“Worst timing ever,” Alex remarked, sounding wonderfully breathless.  
  
“Should’ve hidden it better,” Jack said by way of agreement.  
  
And they kept staring, looking at each other like they were really seeing the other person for the first time. Jack kept noticing things about Alex he hadn’t noticed before, like the way the corners of his eyes crinkled when he smiled, or how there was a slight gap between his front teeth but it was kind of _adorable_ , and when the hell did Jack start thinking of anything as adorable?  
  
“You should-- Uh, yeah, you should probably text your brother,” Alex said, clearing his throat and grinning all crooked and perfect. And it seemed like he was going through something of a Herculean effort to let Jack go. Even when he finally did, he kept one hand on Jack’s upper arm.  
  
Jack did just that, and it was probably the fastest text he had ever sent. Just a quick ‘ _Go get em_ ’ before he shoved his phone back into his pocket. And that speed record was only broken by the speed in which he pulled Alex back down, kissing him almost hard enough to bruise.  
  
As far as romantic gestures and moments went, it wasn’t the most romantic at all, but it was probably the most appropriate in Jack’s life. His first real honest to goodness kiss was spent on a boulder in the woods behind his family’s farm, lit completely by moonlight, only a few hundred yards away from where his ghostly murdered ancestor was supposedly buried. Best of all, they kissed to the backdrop of sound that wasn’t angelic harps or some orchestra soundtrack like in the movies, but to the horrified screams of several dozen teenagers being chased by Jack’s brother dressed like the Grim Reaper fresh out of a bath.  
  
\---  
  
The Morrison family had more of a storied history than just ghosts and farming. In fact, to anyone acquainted with the family, or in the family itself, if prompted would say something along the lines of, “Which Morrisons are we talking about? The farming ones or the army ones?” They actually tended to be one in the same, but the identification was clear.  
  
Jack had heard that it all started before the old Jack Morrison during the Civil War, all the way back to the American Revolution, when the Morrisons were located in New York and had enlisted as minutemen. From that point onward, there had been a Morrison in every major conflict in the country. There was something in their blood, he had heard, that just couldn’t resist the need to volunteer or enlist. Even when there had been drafts, no one had ever actually been formally drafted. They had always jumped at the chance to join, and just as well, there was some genetic predisposition not just to join, but to _succeed_.  
  
Case in point was Jack’s own enlistment. Absolutely no one had been surprised that Jack joined the army the second he had the chance. In fact, he had taken his ASVAB a year before his eighteenth birthday, and to even less surprise (but still to celebration), he had scored as Category I. Jack’s mom joked that the recruiters were probably waiting in the bushes outside their house, counting down the days until Jack turned eighteen and they could pounce on him. Even then, there was no pouncing necessary. He had decided he’d join the army, the same way every Morrison had; aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins, on and on all the way back to the very first American Morrisons.  
  
His plan had been the same as his father’s, essentially. He would enlist for the required amount of time, and once it was done, he’d go back to Indiana and stay on the farm. Not that the farm was lacking on help, since Matt was going into agriculture science and was going back once he was done with his degree, and Maddie had been toying with the idea of coming back also. Only Caleb seemed adamant on leaving Indiana for good, but he had only gone as far as Chicago.  
  
But like a lot of things in life, his plan didn’t pan out quite the way he expected.  
  
His basic training had taken place in Fort Jackson, South Carolina, where he had been properly shaved, examined, inoculated, and supplied. His drill sergeant had rather mildly nicknamed him ‘Captain America’, which went along with other nicknames like ‘Farmboy’ and from one Illinois-born private, ‘Hoosier’. There were worse things to be called, like Private Rexrode being ‘Bucktooth’ or, after one memorable but unfortunate incident, Private Albert being ‘Bedwetter’.  
  
His ten weeks in BCT proved something to himself and to his superiors, however. While Jack, his ASVAB score notwithstanding, expected his performance to be average, he found that he actually flourished in the military. Some people in his unit found it difficult to go from civilian life to military, while Jack adjusted quickly. He also took on his high school-esque leadership role once more, as even beyond his assigned battle buddy (the ridiculously clever and very mouthy Private Harper), people looked to him for direction. He remembered instruction without flaw or a single mistake, he remembered his way around Fort Jackson like he had been there for years, and every chore and task was done with absolute precision and good pacing. It wasn’t uncommon to hear things like, “Hey, Captain America, what are we supposed to be doing?” or cheers of elation when someone found out that they were on fire guard with him at night.  
  
His physical performance ended up being exceptional. Phase I training proved this in spades, as by the end of hand-to-hand combat training, his platoon unanimously voted on him representing them in the company-wide combatives competition. And Phase III only made it more poignant, as Jack set a new company record during his physical fitness test, not only getting the highest set score of 300, but surpassing it, much to his drill sergeant’s delight.  
  
What was more than just proving himself physically or mentally was the fact that he outright refused to leave anyone behind. During regular PT, although he could have easily set the pace higher to make himself look good at the expense of his unit, he didn’t. He slowed himself down so that it was reasonable, even for the weaker ones in his group. One of his chief goals was to keep morale up, to reduce the chance of anyone going AWOL or doing something worse to themselves. Just by the grace of having a big family with plenty of siblings, Jack knew the signs of deeper mental afflictions, and he fine tuned those particular senses to the people in his platoon. Depression and anxiety were two of the chief ones, especially in the first few weeks, and rather than berate those who showed signs of it, Jack was quick to pull them aside during personal time and ask them how they were doing, or recommend ways to take care of themselves.  
  
So, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that at the end of BCT, after their platoon completed a (drill sergeant-approved) fantastic field training exercise, and Jack was approved for Advanced Individual Training, he was asked to consider joining special operations. His original plan, aside from just serving out the normal amount of time, was to go into the infantry. It was simple enough, and it was what plenty of people in his family had done before him. And even though it shouldn’t have been the aforementioned surprise, Jack found himself a little startled regardless.  
  
But he had agreed, and was set to go from Fort Jackson to Fort Bragg in North Carolina.  
  
The whole affair felt like a whirlwind, from the beginning of BCT to the moment he arrived at Fort Bragg. It was almost enough to be disorienting, and there were plenty of times where Jack wondered if it was all just a very surreal dream. Fort Bragg was nothing like Fort Jackson, and it was the farthest cry possible from the tiny town in Indiana where he had grown up.  
  
And for the first time since he had joined, he had to ground himself. He needed some kind of tether, a link to keep him Jack Morrison, Indiana farm boy, rather than just PFC John Morrison, an exceptional array of letters and numbers on a paper.  
  
So, when he had the first chance at Fort Bragg, he called his grandfather.  
  
Big Jack was living with Jack’s aunt by that point, having outright refused to go into a nursing home after Jack’s grandmother had passed away, on threat of desertion (“I swear, I’ll live in a tent in the woods in Wisconsin before I go there!”) and seemed to think just as much of getting a nice vacation home in Florida. Big Jack had insisted that he stay in Indiana, not a prisoner to any nurse or doctor, and certainly not cooped up in some miserable, overly-sterile home where he wouldn’t even be guaranteed to be treated right. His body was failing him, sure, but Big Jack’s mind was still as sharp as a razor’s edge, and that’s what kept him going.  
  
It was storming at Fort Bragg when Jack called, cradling the phone between his shoulder and jaw, huddled under an awning and watching sheets of rain practically obscure the pines in the distance.  
  
“ _Hello?_ ” His grandfather still sounded just as ancient and gravelly as always, and Jack felt like someone had untied a tight knot in his chest. Relief flooded him in an instant.  
  
“Hey grandpa, it’s me,” Jack replied, trying his best to speak past the tightness in his throat.  
  
A pause; one second, and then two, and finally-- “ _Little Jack? Holy moly, boy! Good to hear from you!_ ” Big Jack exclaimed. “ _How’ve you been, kid?_ ”  
  
Jack watched lightning spiderweb its way across the sky and smiled despite himself. “I’ve been good, grandpa. Did mom tell you where I am?”  
  
“ _Yeah! First Morrison to go to Fort Bragg. Boy, I knew there was somethin’ real special about you. Hell, I knew that when you were barely hip-high. Those Carolinians treating you okay?_ ”  
  
“As good as they can, I guess,” Jack said, stretching his legs out in front of him. “It’s been pretty crazy here. Definitely nothing like Fort Jackson.”  
  
“ _Well, it’s only gonna get crazier from there, kid. Life of a soldier ain’t easy. Though, way I’ve heard it, you’ve been takin’ to that life pretty well. How’re you holdin’ up?_ ”  
  
It was a different question than ‘how have you been’ and ‘are they treating you okay’. Jack knew his grandpa’s tiny nuances when he spoke. After all, half of Jack’s goals in childhood involved emulating his grandfather however he could, between his speech and the way he treated others. Asking Jack how he was holding up carried another meaning just under the surface, something more akin to ‘I know you’ve been doing well, but seriously, how are _you_ feeling?’ And Jack actually had a hard time answering that.  
  
“Uh, well,” he started, hating how hesitant he sounded. “Good as ever, I guess.”  
  
There was another pause, and Jack knew immediately that Big Jack got the second meaning on that as well. “ _Aw, boy,_ ” Big Jack started. “ _Listen, you got one of the best heads on one of the best set of shoulders. You don’t need some screamin’ drill sergeant to tell you that. Hell, you don’t even need the president to tell ya. Whatever you’re worried about, don’t be._ ”  
  
Jack frowned and sighed. What _was_ he worried about? Losing himself in all of it? Becoming something less like the kid he was and more like the battle-hardened warrior they seemed to want him to be? Failing his unit? Disappointing people? It was hard to say, and something told him that he was worried about everything. There was a lot of doubt swimming around in his mind.  
  
“ _Hey, don’t do that, kid,”_ his grandfather said, only sounding mildly irritated. The rest of it was just that familiar warmth that Jack knew and loved best about Big Jack. “ _Look. No matter what happens to you out there, you’re still Jack Morrison. And you’re still that kid I know who worried over barn kittens because you thought their mama wouldn’t keep them warm enough so you gave them hot water bottles and blankets, or the kid that cried when you found out what a stewing chicken was, or, hell, the kid that got in a fist fight only because some middle school kid was bullyin’ his little sister. You don’t lose sight of that, okay? You’re still that kid, no matter how much firepower they put in your hands or how many ways they teach you to hurt someone. You’re not hurtin’ anyone because you like it, right?_ ”  
  
“No,” Jack replied, and even with just one word, it felt good to say.  
  
“ _That’s right. I know army guys don’t like to hear someone call ‘em gentle or sweet or whatever, and you’re grandma would’ve been the one to say it. But it’s just me, and I’m sayin’ it. You got a heart of gold, Little Jack. And what ever they’re gonna have you do out there, just remember that you’re usin’ all that to protect people and help ‘em out. The world’s not gettin’ any less crazy, or mean. You just gotta make sure that you’re there to help it when it needs helpin’._ ”  
  
All of it was exactly what Jack needed to hear. Really, he wondered why he had waited so long to call. Every word just seemed to ease him a little more, until he was sitting there, watching the storm, knowing what faced him, and feeling like he was never more ready to keep going.  
  
“Thanks, grandpa,” he said, and as though he was getting it through osmosis, he could hear his grandfather’s warmth in his own voice.  
  
“ _Anytime, Little Jack. Just call me more often! And your mom, because that woman worries herself sick over you._ ”  
  
Jack smiled, ducking his head down. “I will. Promise.”  
  
“ _Yeah, you’d better,_ ” Big Jack said, and it was nothing but kindness and love in his voice. “ _How much time you got left?_ ”  
  
“Just a few more minutes.”  
  
“ _Mind indulgin’ me for a bit, then? Your aunt’s about sick of hearin’ me talk, and I got some army stories for ya._ ”  
  
“Go for it, grandpa,” Jack said. And just in that moment, he was little Jack Morrison again, listening to his grandfather tell stories and feeling like everything was going to be okay. It didn’t matter if the stories were about ghosts, or war, or something as simple as how life was on the farm sixty years ago. It just felt right.  
  
He went to the barracks that night feeling far better than he had in ages.  
  
The timing couldn’t have been better. As he stepped into the rec room, he was greeted with two soldiers playing pool while a small group of them was concentrated in a corner, around PFC Dietrich, caught in the middle of telling a story. Dietrich perked up when Jack entered, and he grinned wide at the sight of him. “Hey, Morrison! You’re just in time!”  
  
Jack walked over, leaning up against a wall in the absence of seats. “For what?”  
  
“Ghost stories,” grumbled one of the pool players. “Since, y’know, live combat doesn’t freak ‘em out but hearin’ about ghosts sure does.”  
  
Dietrich snorted and rolled his eyes. “Alrighty then, killjoy. _Anyway,_ I was just starting on the Battle of Monroe’s Crossroads. You heard of it?” Jack shook his head and Dietrich nodded, turning back towards all the soldiers listening to it. “Well, long story short. Civil War conflict, Rebels snuck up on some camping Union guys and nailed ‘em. People died on both sides, and no one actually won. Sucks all around. But the thing is, it happened right at Fort Bragg. You know the Normandy Dropzone is? Yeah, right by there. You can still go see the graves if you get clearance for it. And that’s where the stories start, right? It’s by one of the impact areas, and sometimes field training ends up out there, since there’s a couple foxholes. So, you’ll get one or two guys out there by themselves, and maybe it’s a little dark, and it’s Fort Bragg, so it gets kinda foggy. Things are gonna happen.”  
  
A few soldiers snorted, and one of them wolf-whistled.  
  
Dietrich pointedly ignored them and went on. “So, okay, this happened a few years back. Same kind of idea. Field training exercise, guys in a foxhole, it’s nighttime and we got the Fort Bragg fog rolling in. They’re out there at some ungodly hour, watching for movement or something to report back with, and then they hear gunfire. _Loads_ of it, but it’s not guns like what we have. They’re hearing like, muskets firing. Then, they’re seeing all this light and movement out in the fog, and it’s like a whole battle’s happening right in front of them. Before they call it in, one of them gets a better look and he sees they’re all wearing like, old Civil War uniforms. They’re legit watching an entire ghost battle happen in front of them.”  
  
“Did they call it in?” one of the soldiers asked jokingly.  
  
Dietrich shrugged. “Not sure. Just know that it happened, and that the dropzone can get pretty creepy at night.”  
  
“Again,” the soldier at the pool table said. “Combat doesn’t freak you out, but seeing ghosts does.”  
  
“Hey, it’s _different,_ ” Dietrich shot back, before the entire group (aside from the pool players) broke into conversation, mostly talking about ghost stories they’d heard, especially from back home. The Isaiah Morrison story brimmed in Jack’s mind, and he smiled, still feeling that lasting warmth from talking with his grandfather.  
  
“Okay,” Jack said, a little louder than the rest of the group, catching their attention. “But I have a better one.”  
  
\---  
  
The rain was coming down hard enough to remind Jack of tornado weather, the kind of weather that had a tendency to ravage farmland and cause some property damage. Camp Mackall was being assaulted by the weather like the ground in the air were locked in combat, and the casualties were the large group of soldiers trying to train in those conditions.  
  
PFC Morrison wasn’t really PFC Morrison at that moment. For that matter, he wasn’t even Jack Morrison.  Right then, he was Candidate 76, trying his damnedest to keep his concentration on lifting a three hundred pound log with his group while the course cadre was screaming in his face and the rain was hitting his skin hard enough to hurt.  
  
“Are you even _trying,_ 76?!” the cadre yelled, just loud enough to be heard over the rain. “You know what I see when I look at you, candidate? I see that you are _weak_! _Weak_ soldiers are _dead_ soldiers, do you hear me?!”  
  
Jack knew what the cadre was doing, as he had done it to numerous other candidates throughout the time they had been doing the exercise. They were weeding out the weakest in the group, pruning it until all those who were left were the best they could find, refined down to the strongest mentally, physically, and emotionally. The ones that were weeded out so far were the ones that within an hour, had literally dropped to the side, vomiting and crying and curling up in the mud because it was already too much for them. Lifting the log was strenuous, but Jack would be damned if he loosened his hold on it. He had already told himself multiple times that he was going to make it, that he wasn’t going to fall to the side and leave. Because at that moment, if he voluntarily withdrew, he wouldn’t be coming back.  
  
So Jack kept his face trained into harsh neutrality, eyes forward, ignoring the rain slicing into his skin and the feeling of his stomach churning and his muscles burning from the strain, and counting each lift as he had been instructed. By the end of the day, he was _going_ to keep going. He would finish his stint at Camp Mackall and he would join Special Forces no matter how much effort it took. He had already poured the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears into it, and he wasn’t just going to leave that behind.  
  
The cadre kept screaming, kept calling him weak, until he moved on. And that would continue for the rest of the duration of the training; yelling, berating, and moving on. It would make Jack stronger, and it would prepare him for the life he knew he was going into. Warfare wasn’t going to be kind, and there was not going to be an enemy there to comfort him, to tell him he wasn’t doing a half bad job but he could afford to do better. No, there would be excruciating pain to the point of torture, and death at the end if he didn’t do his job well. That, and he would have a team. He would have to protect that team and serve it, as much as they would serve him. The log drill was a good lesson in that, as the team had to work together to lift it, and if one dropped his spot, they all dropped or they were otherwise compromised. Jack wasn’t going to be the weak link in that chain.  
  
The cadre started going into a tirade at the end of the line, and Jack watched as the team in front of them lost another person who promptly stumbled out of his group, listed heavy to the left, and then curled up over the top of the wooden boundary and heaved up every last thing he had had for breakfast. The cadre was on him in a second like a mountain lion on a deer.  
  
“Get that weakness out of your _system,_ 44!”  
  
And a few minutes after that, Candidate 112 pelted out from under his team’s log to the course cadre waiting with a clipboard nearby.  
  
“VW?” the cadre asked, without the slightest intonation.  
  
“Yes, sir. I--”  
  
“That’s all I need to hear.”  
  
Voluntary withdrawal. Candidate 112 was permanently out, and it just strengthened Jack’s resolve a little more. His number was just one of many being deposited on a nearby table, a list of those pruned out of their group, like headstones quickly racking up in Mackall’s graveyard. And Jack was set not to have 76 be one of those numbers.  
  
This was going to be the way of things for the next three weeks. It would be a relentless gauntlet, pushing every person there to the limits of their ability, stamina, determination, and inner strength. The course was designed to bring them to the brink of everything that made them who they were. It was going to be grueling, exhausting, and miserable, and Jack knew the moment he entered Camp Mackall that he wasn’t going to leave as the same man, but he was ready to take that challenge. He would earn his green beret, no matter what he had to do to get it.  
  
His muscles screamed against every lift, and he could hear the men on either side of him groaning and panting. The man to his left would probably fail by the end of the day, while the man to his right--  
  
Jack knew he needed to concentrate on his task, but he had found himself a little bit fixated by the man on his right, the unluckily-assigned Candidate 13. The man was massive, even though he and Jack were relatively the same height. He looked like he could have been a quarterback at some point in his life just from the sheer amount of muscle he had. And almost every feature on him denoted that he wasn’t someone to be messed with. He had a low, serious brow over a pair of ember-dark eyes that seemed to constantly burn with a barely-restrained ferocity. His jaw was set like he was perpetually clenching it, and just one word away from a snarl. Even the way he held himself, lifting the log or not, it seemed as if he was constantly preparing to attack, primed like a runner at the start of a race. His appearance spoke for him, enough so that the cadre had only spent a short time yelling at him, but even Jack could see that the cadre was internally impressed. The man hadn’t faltered once during the drill.  
  
During their last set of lifts, Jack could feel the man on his right hoist the weight like it didn’t matter much to him. The only sign that it might have registered as heavy was a slight grunt, virtually the same sound anyone would have made picking up something like their rucksack or a jerry can, rather than a three hundred pound log. And then Jack watched as another candidate two rows up darted away from his team like a man possessed, immediately bending double just outside the line and retching hard enough to make Jack feel a little queasy. Again, the cadre was on him.  
  
“You abandoned your _team,_ 94! You’re making them lift that weight for you! They have to pick up _your_ slack because you were too weak to do it!”  
  
And Candidate 94 just sort of tottered away, the cadre right on his heels the entire time.  
  
But Jack and Candidate 13 made it, their team setting down the log with only one taken from their numbers. Immediately, the course cadre went over to them and ordered them to do sit up repetitions.  
  
Jack couldn’t help but make a connection between these drills and Dante’s levels of Hell. Each drill seemed designed to be more painful than the last. Situps, bicycle kicks, and then rolling back and forth in the freezing mud until they were thoroughly coated. Each set caused them to lose more men, until the table had two neat rows of numbers. 13 and 76 were not among them.  
  
By nightfall, when training had all but burned them out and the men made the slow crawl back to the barracks, Jack finally learned Candidate 13s name. In the barracks, they were one bunk apart, and close enough that they could speak without raising their voices. Lights out was in an hour, and even though it would have been beneficial to just use that extra hour for sleep, Jack and 13 were nearly knee to knee, working at getting their boots and soaked socks off.  
  
“Not bad, guerro,” 13 had muttered, tossing one heavy boot to the side. “Didn’t feel you falter once. That’s good.”  
  
Jack was still fixated, eyes on the crease between 13s eyebrows that never seemed to go away. “Same to you,” he returned, trying to smile despite the persistent burning ache that was already forming between his shoulder blades. “And you can call me Jack, or Morrison. Whatever you want.”  
  
13 glanced up once, eyes still caught in their steady low burn. “Huh,” 13 said before he looked down and started rolling a sock off. “Fair’s fair, I guess. I’m Gabriel Reyes. Just Gabe works.”  
  
There was something a little funny about a guy who looked like that being named Gabriel, but Jack decided that his name suited him. “Nice to meet you, Gabe,” he said, stopping to extend one sore and calloused hand. Gabe met him halfway, not even hesitating to give him a firm shake that probably hurt them both, although neither winced away from it. “You’ve been in long?”  
  
Gabe nodded and dropped his hand to his side. “Yeah, a little over five years. I’m a Captain, but I’ve always had my eye on this. Wasn’t until a few months ago that I decided to take a shot at it. You?”  
  
“PFC,” Jack replied, working off his other boot. “I’ve been at Fort Bragg for a year and a half.”  
  
“Huh,” Gabe said again, but this time, it was with a quirked eyebrow. The crease didn’t disappear.  
  
There was no way to know at that time what their short meeting would mean in the long run. All Jack knew by the time he finally fell asleep was that the man one bunk over, with the eyes like hot coals and the posture of a man constantly prepared to fight, was Gabriel Reyes, born and raised in Los Angeles, proud of his O-3 rank but always wanting more. The man lived for a challenge, to prove himself as something better than what he was before. In that, Jack found himself relating to him.  
  
But there was something under the surface, and it manifested in his eyes, in the way he worked his way through each challenge like he was prepared to tear through it with teeth and claws bared, in the controlled, deep timbre of his voice. He had the look of a man haunted by something, and Jack couldn’t decide if he was afraid of it, or angry at it, or maybe a mix of both. It could have been confused for a spark of madness, but something told Jack that there was far more to it than that. He would have plenty of time to figure it out for himself, provided he finish Phase I in one piece.  
  
It might have been the exhaustion, combined with an imagination piqued by Gabe, but Jack fell asleep with his mind swaying wildly through his thoughts, catching on odd things that didn’t make sense when combined. It all culminated in him looking over at Gabe’s bunk one last time, and seeing a pale shape in the darkness of the barracks. There, just above Gabe’s head on the railing of the bed, was an owl, its face like a white disc, like moonlight, its eyes dark like Gabe’s. The owl peered back at Jack, and then down at Gabe, before it took flight, completely soundless, its moon-bright feathers dissipating in the shadows.  
  
Jack blinked sluggishly, trying to make sense of what he had seen, but all he could do was close his eyes and dream of birds and bad omens.

**Author's Note:**

> [My tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)
> 
> Seriously, come talk to me. I'm in Overwatch hell and I have no plans on leaving any time soon. <3


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